


Loss Ficlet: Moving Day

by missclairebelle



Series: Loss (Ficlets) [14]
Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, IKEA, Moving In Together, moving is the absolute worst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:01:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15386337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missclairebelle/pseuds/missclairebelle
Summary: Jamie and Claire move in together, Jamie gets the bone-headed idea to go to IKEA, and things get twisty.





	Loss Ficlet: Moving Day

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this absolutely ages ago and just realized I never posted it to AO3. This is a good lesson in "K sucks at AO3 and is better at tumblr." I'm there with the same username, a master list, the whole shebang. Come find me. ;)

**Loss (Modern AU)**

**Moving Day**

Jamie Fraser did not fight me with fists, but his words the day we moved in together might as well have been a closed-fist punch to the gut.

Our day started by writing huge checks to take possession of our new flat.

We went up the stairs together for the first time, arms filled with boxes and shopping bags. After unlocking the door, I had hesitated with my hand on the handle.

 _This was ours, the first tangible thing that was equal parts of both of us_.

“Something wrong?” Jamie asked.

I suddenly felt a little silly and I turned, releasing the handle.

“It’s just a big moment for us, Jamie. We’re stuck together.”

He _laughed_ at me, dropping the things he was carrying before bending to pick me up by the thighs.

“The apartment’s no’ the reason we’re stuck together, Sassenach,” he said into my stomach.  He maneuvered me up until I was bent at the waist over his shoulder. I squeaked, fisting my hands into his t-shirt.

He carried me across the threshold into the flat and carefully went to his knees, lowering me to the bare hardwood floor. We just kissed and smiled and touched each other over our clothes until our new furniture was delivered. I felt the space in my heart for him growing broader, wider, stronger, each time he touched me and when he whispered: “ _we’re home_.”

It was a magic that did not manage to spread to other parts of our day. A pernicious tension started at a low boil with a trip to IKEA late in the afternoon after our moving help left. I decided that resisting the trip was not the hill I wanted to die on, so I grudgingly agreed to go along.

In the car on the way there, our conversation was awkward in a way it never had been before.

“I don’t get how this is even remotely a priority,” I had commented with my arms folded over my stomach.  I regretted my words the moment they were out of my mouth, but it was true. Everything we owned was in boxes. Leaving our mess to buy _more stuff_ before we even had a chance to inventory our combined lives just didn’t make sense.

Jamie muttered a response under his breath that I couldn’t hear.

I asked if he wanted to share his comment at a reasonable volume.

He grunted, “ _Never mind_.” 

Instead of repeating himself, he gave me a sideways glance and made an offhand remark that maybe all I needed was “to eat something and smile a little.” _I wasn’t hungry, damn it.  And I hardly felt like smiling_ even though _technically_ I was probably the one to start with the sarcastic tone.

I turned up the radio so I didn’t have to listen to him breathe next to me. He changed the station.

I sat brooding for the next twenty-three minutes, wondering how we were going to fix this bubbling well of snark that was polluting our day.

Once inside of IKEA, we ate hot dogs and frozen yogurt and wandered. I gave opinions on finishes for bookshelves and desks. Jamie tested drawers and changed his mind repeatedly. I touched gauzy curtains and dutifully wrote down aisle and bin numbers with a small yellow pencil when he found a bookcase he liked. Jamie carried a bag full of curtains and a throw pillow, accepting my choices without protest.

We were in the middle of one of the staged bedrooms when Jamie became intent on misbehaving. He grabbed my hand and turned me like we were in a ballroom dance competition.  ( _A twirl, a squeal, a half-dip, and a chaste kiss_.) We allowed the looks from other patrons roll off of our backs, laughing at each other.  Jamie made a promise with a low voice that he would thoroughly debase me back in _“our home”_ later.

 _Our home_.  

He pulled me to his side by the waist in the queue to check out and said, “ _I’ve never bought furniture with someone I love_.”

We were back on an even keel, for at least that moment.

But then in the parking lot, we started to chafe at another again – tired, sweaty, fighting with his narrow backseat to accept two bookshelves and a desk.

I told him he was acting like a jerk when he snapped: “ _No, no, no,_ _move it to your **other** left, Claire_.”

In response to my statement, his face cracked like I had broken up with him and did not say anything.

Once loaded, our new furniture precariously secured by twine and with the car’s hatch half-open, we sat in together in silence for a few moments. His hand searched out mine and then we kissed quietly over the gearshift, our lips dry and tongues remaining behind our own teeth. Our hands found each other’s necks in a silently-brokered apology.

The kiss, the touch said it all.  

 _I am sorry I was acting like a jerk; I am sorry I said you were acting like a jerk, but really… you were being kind of short with me_.

Again, though, our peace was short-lived.

We were sitting on the floor of _our home_ , surrounded by what seemed like millions of bolts and washers and screws and pieces of particle board and _still-packed boxes_.

The tension crested again.  

Jamie was visibly irritated by his new desk.  When I explained for what felt like the tenth time, attempting to keep my voice even, that the instructions did not have words, just pictures, the dam broke.

“Would ye just give them to me?” He reached for the instruction booklet, making a grasping motion in the space between us and not bothering to look up from the board in his lap.  

I handed him the instructions and retied the bun on the top of my head as he glared down at the pictures.

“Well fuck,” he mumbled, wadding the instructions and discarding them to the floor. He returned his concentration to getting a screw to line up with a pre-drilled hole, his stupid little Allen wrench in the corner of his mouth. I suddenly wondered why the pictures of the little men assembling furniture in the instructions were not holding bottles of vodka, looking longingly at the smoldering remains of their romantic relationships.

“What can I do?” I asked, arranging myself on the floor next to him, running my palm over the assortment of fasteners.

“Nothing,” he responded, the wrench falling from his lips. “Dinna touch those, I have ‘em sorted.”

I stayed anyway for moral support, feeling slightly bad for his frustration.

Ten minutes later, and no closer to having a piece of furniture that resembled something like a desk, I decided I was done just watching him curse under his breath and force the pieces together.

“I’m not doing anything, so I’m going to go unpack now.”

His eyes met mine over the giant mess of metal and plastic and wood pieces that had no identifiable structure despite ninety minutes of “assembly.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he snapped.

I turned music on - low, slow stuff - and hoped that it would set a tone.  I could feel his irritation radiating and swelling, sucking the air out from between us.

Our boxes were not as well marked as they should have been, so I started opening them at random with Jamie’s car keys.  

I found a home for my favorite candles on top of some coffee table books from one of Jamie’s boxes. He only grunted when I asked if he minded the candles being on the books.

I wiped down a picture of the two of us – both of us grinning, Jamie sweaty and handsy with a medal on his neck after finishing a marathon. I carefully placed it on an end table, remembering that day: the tangy stink of his body, the dampness of his t-shirt against my bare arm, the taste of Gatorade on his lips, the way he lifted me into his arms like he hadn’t just run forty-two kilometers.

 _Our home_ : filled with bits of us. I couldn’t stop the smile that came to me.

I had started to wipe the dust of moving day off of the television stand, humming along to the music, when he spoke again. “By the way, Jen, Ian, and the kids are coming over in like thirty minutes.”

I stopped, setting my furniture polish and rag down. “Huh?”

“They’re in town for Maggie’s dance competition.  I told them to swing by, see the new place.”

“Jamie, did you think to tell me that they were going to pop by?”  

I was sweating, I smelled, he was sitting in a sea of hardware, the air in the apartment was crackling from the number of times he’d said the f-word in the last few minutes. 

We were surrounded by disaster and were barely hanging on.

I stared at him, feeling a swell of tears rise at the thought of having his family in our home when it was like this.

I wanted to order takeout, to eat it laughing at each other about our crankiness earlier in the day. I wanted to clean the sweat off of each other off in our new shower. I wanted him to make good on his promise – to make love in the new sheets on our new bed in our new home. I wanted to sleep with our fingers touching until the light woke us up the next morning.

I wanted to have family and friends over when we were not living with boxes up to our hips and once the mess of the joining of our lives had been sorted.

After a few moments, he grumbled, “I dinna think I need permission, Claire.”

“I didn’t say you needed _permission_ , _Jamie_ ,” I said, putting unnecessary emphasis on his name. He looked up at me for the first time since saying they were coming. “I just wish we could have your family over some other time… when we’re not in such an unmitigated _mess_.”

“It’s not a mess,” he muttered, raking a hand through his hair and rising easily from the floor without uncrossing his legs until he was on his feet.

“Really?” I widened my eyes and looked around to emphasize our current situation.

“ _It’s fine_. Jen wants to see our new place, it’s an older sister thing. My family cares. Ye dinna have that and I would no’ expect ye to understand it.”

 _Family_. I wouldn’t understand.

His words knocked the breath out of me. 

My mouth went dry. The light sweat on the back of my neck cooled.  I felt like my blood was rushing to my feet while at the same time I felt a furious flush rising in my neck.  

It was the first time since I’d met him that he had made me feel like this – sick, empty, _pissed as hell_.

“Jamie,” I whispered and chomped down on my lip. It took me a moment before I could continue. “Please tell me that you didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

Realization crept over his face over what he had said and how I had taken it.

“ _Mo ghràidh_ , _of course_  I dinna mean anything that would earn me that look in yer eyes.” He took a half step towards me.  

I shrugged away from him as he reached for me and said, “Don’t touch me right now.” 

I rolled my head and held my hands up. His mouth opened and closed, he swallowed. 

“I need a few minutes.”

“Claire, c’mon…”

I walked down the hall.

‘ _Follow me, follow me, follow me,_ ’ my heart begged.  

‘ ** _Fuck him_** ,’ my brain responded to my idiotic breaking heart.

He didn’t follow.

I shut our bedroom door only halfway and busied myself with the boxes stacked next to the doorway, furiously wiping tears on the back of my hand as quickly as they fell.

The first box was mine. I quickly put the clothes on hangers and hung them in the closet.

“Quit. Fucking. Crying.” My words were flat and the directive was ineffective. My eyes stung and the tears dripped down my neck. I lifted the hem of my t-shirt and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyeballs.

The second box was his.  Jeans, sweaters, running clothes, and the fifth Harry Potter book. The book had traveled in an overnight bag back and forth between our flats where he read one chapter to me aloud every night. I opened the book to where Jamie had dog-eared the page we were on. I read for a moment before setting it on the nightstand. I refolded Jamie’s clothes and tucked them away in the dresser, trying to ignore the smell of him that clung to the freshly-laundered fabric.

The third box was also his. It was filled with things I had never seen: a leather-bound journal with JAMMF embossed on the corner, a thick leather cord wrapped around and around and around the curling cover; a long string of pearls in mesh bag ( _his mother’s_ ; _I knew of them, but had never seen them_ ); a photograph of him with his mother ( _Ellen_ ) and his brother ( _Willie_ ); rosary beads attached a laminated copy of his mother’s obituary.

There was something intimate about touching Jamie’s belongings, the things I had never seen before.  

I heard his footsteps in the hallway coming towards me – bare feet on wood floors.

My hands stilled on his things and I stared at the wall, my lips pursed.  I did not feel guilty for touching these belongings that he had never shared with me, but I felt wrong doing so with a touch of anger still simmering in my belly.

He stopped.  I pictured his hand reaching for the slightly ajar door.

I closed my eyes, waiting.  I was buzzing at his proximity.  

He moved again – footsteps _plod, plod, plodding_ back to the living room.

Letting out a long breath, I set the rosary beads, pearls, photograph, and journal on the dresser for him to put away later.

I found our new sheets, freshly laundered and tucked into a box with towels and toiletries from my place, and set my mind on getting the bed made up.

Jamie was in the room before I even realized he had come back down the hallway.  At the rocky sound of him clearing his throat, I turned and looked him.  Without a clue as to what to say, I just kept unfolding the sheet.  

_Do not cry. Do not cry. Do not cry._

“I told Jenny that tonight’s not great. She understands and said she will come by whenever we’re ready.”

I nodded, letting him take an edge of the sheet from me. Jamie walked to the other side of the bed, snapping the sheet gently so it rose between us like a parachute and floated back down to the bed.

“Choose your side wisely,” I said blandly.

This was not the first time we had made a bed together, but the moment seemed somehow important.  He raised his eyebrows, slipping a corner of the sheet under the mattress.

“You’re going to be sleeping on whatever side you choose for the next year.” He still didn’t get where I was going with this. “When you make a bed with someone else you are choosing the side that’s yours. It’s important that you make a reasoned choice.”

I felt like I wasn’t talking about choosing a side of the bed.  I was wondering if he regretted our decision to move in together.

“Aye, well I’m fine on whatever side is opposite of yours.” He put the second corner on the mattress and rounded the bed again. He paused and then took a deliberate step closer to me.  I took a step back.  His words were low, husky, when he said, “I’ll sleep wherever you want me to… forever.”

“Are you sure that I understand what ‘ _forever’_ means?” My tone had shifted; my hackles were raised. 

“Aye, I deserved that.” His Adam’s apple dipped under a swallow and rose on a sigh.

“And a whole lot worse, Jamie.” _Not true; I had no intention to punish him for what he’d said. I was going to choose to think he hadn’t meant it_.

“I… I dinna ken what to say, Claire.”

I didn’t fill in the blanks for him and just swallowed hard, watching and listening. Coming up with the right words didn’t seem that hard to me. ‘I’m sorry,’ would have been a good start. I hoped that he was going to get this moment right.

‘ _Just show me something, Jamie_ ,’ my mind begged.

I tucked my corner around to the bare mattress to busy my shaking hands and took to smoothing the edges of the bedding.

“I am verra sorry for what I said. I dinna want to make excuses, but” –

I fought the urge to tell him that using the word ‘but’ after a proclamation about not making excuses made his apology internally inconsistent –

“I am tired and stressed. _Of course_ , I hope ye ken that never intended to hurt ye. I dinna ken what I meant by what I said, but whatever it was it came out wrong.”

When his words stopped flowing, I took a step towards him.

“Please. Forgive me. I canna bear that I hurt ye, that I made ye cry. But I especially hate myself for hurting you like _that_.”

‘ _You, Jamie. You are my family. I know what it means_.’ I couldn’t bring myself to say it, so I took another step until our stomachs were touching. I laid my face in the crook of his neck.  Neither of us moved to wrap our arms around the other, but our fingertips came together like magnets at our sides, exploring one another’s palms and wrists.

I pulled back so I could look at him. “I’m sorry that I’ve been short with you today.”

“I didna notice,” he chuckled, his breath warm across my temple.

 _Liar._ My responsive smile was wide and immediate, but faltered and fell away quickly. I couldn’t look at him and say what I needed to say, so I rested my forehead at the base of his throat and spoke into his t-shirt.

“You’re the only family I have, Jamie. I don’t have blood to come check on us, make sure we’re set, to care about us being settled.”

“They’re yer family, too, ya ken.”  I felt his lips in my hair. “Ye’re the family I choose, Claire, and that’s more than blood.”

After we stood together for a while, I started to wonder what the mourning period was for what he had said, what the appropriate lag was between his words and my forgiveness. I pulled back and looked at him, really looked at him, stuck between the fading burn of anger and disappointment. I kissed the corner of his mouth, eyes open.  He breathed in.

I needed physical reassurance, a connection. I slipped my fingers under his shirt and ghosted my hand over the wiry hairs on his belly, over the curve of his hip. I stilled my hand.  He read my face, knowing it probably before I did. 

I did not want anything other than just _closeness_

“Let’s just hold each other, aye?” he whispered, his palm finding my motionless fingers. “We can do the rest can be later.”

And there, on the half-made bed in our sweaty clothes, we held each other until the sun had long disappeared and I was ready for more.


End file.
